Posted by Martin Orr on
Monday, 05 December 2005 at 09:20
This week was the last week of term and I returned to Belfast on Saturday. There was an exciting climax to my round of lectures. I did Law on Monday; on Tuesday I had arranged to go to Chinese History (for Oriental Studies) at 11. I had found the second year Trinity art historian, who told me who the first year was but I still hadn't found her; according to my reading of the lecture list, the only remaining Art History lecture was at 10 on Tuesday. So I had to borrow a bike in order to get between the History of Art and Oriental Studies departments.
However when I arrived at the Department of History of Art at 10 am, there was clearly no lecture. I assumed that the art historians had decided to take the last week off and that I would be unable to complete the subjects this term. However I found Sophie, the art historian, in the afternoon and she told me that there was a lecture on Wednesday morning. It turns out I had misread the lecture list, although I'm still not clear how it maps onto reality. Anyway that done, there was little to do in the last couple of days and it was odd to be hanging around Cambridge with no work needing to be done.
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Martin
Tags
cambridge, lectures
Posted by Martin Orr on
Monday, 28 November 2005 at 08:46
Yesterday I was stewarding at the College Advent service, the biggest service of the year. This meant welcoming people and directing them to seats; but also being in charge of fire safety. In fact in the event of a fire I was responsible for getting people through the main doors from the Chapel into the ante-Chapel; this is a major job as there were 500 people in the Chapel and only one other fire exit (and that exit is newly added). Fire is in fact a significant risk at this service because it is all candle-lit. Fortunately that part of my duties was not required.
The last few days of this week were very busy as I had one examples sheet due in on Thursday and another on Friday, as well as a German class and supervision on Friday. I now have just two more questions left to do on my last examples sheet for this term, and two more supervisions. Plus a German listening test on Friday, the day before I come home. In terms of going to all courses' lectures, there are three left: Law, Oriental Studies and History of Art. There are also three more days of lectures. History of Art in particular is difficult as there is only one first year in the college doing it and I don't know who they are. So I may or may not get that completed.
For those in Focus, see you on Sunday,
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Martin
Tags
cambridge, chapel, languages, lectures, trinity
Posted by Martin Orr on
Monday, 21 November 2005 at 18:43
This week I voted in two elections: termly elections for all the officers and committees of the Cambridge Union Society, and a by-election for the Vice-President of the Trinity College Students Union. I took my voting responsibilities very seriously and went to the hustings preceding these elections at which all the candidates gave a speech. In the case of the Cambridge Union, this lasted over 2.5 hours and very few people bothered to go except the candidates and current officers.
This weekend I also had a maths mentoring conference. The mentoring scheme is where school pupils who are good at maths are sent a sheet of problems every month and assigned a mentor - either a teacher or an undergraduate - to help them and mark their work. I have been in the advanced level of this scheme for several years, as well as being a mentor for the junior level. Now I have become a mentor for the senior level i.e. for people in sixth form who are not of Olympiad standard. Anyway there has just been a mentors' conference in Trinity, where we had talks and workshops on how to comment on people's work etc. We also had a very nice mentors' dinner on Saturday night.
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Martin
Tags
cambridge, imo
Posted by Martin Orr on
Wednesday, 09 November 2005 at 08:30
I'm pretty busy at the moment, largely due to the fact that I am going to Stockholm at the weekend for the ACM programming contest. This is a competition in which universities send teams of three, broadly similar to the IOI except that you work as a team and the trip is much shorter (only three days). Trinity is sending two teams; the one I'm on also has Paul Jeffreys, UK/GB IMO and IOI medallist, and Mark Thompson, GB IOI medallist and member of the UK IMO squad.
As well as training for the competition itself, it has also meant I have had to reschedule a supervision from Friday to this afternoon. With two supervisions yesterday as well that has meant a lot of work the past few days, but fortunately it is all done now.
What else have I been doing? My parents came to visit Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, which was great. On Sunday there was the Freshers' Concert in the Master's Lodge: anyone in the first year could audition to perform in this, and we had a range of stunning performances on piano, violin, viola, bassoon and voice. The first year choral scholars also did a couple of pieces - Cole Porter and something similar, very different from their usual chapel repertoire!
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Martin
Tags
cambridge, ioi, music, tcms, trinity
Posted by Martin Orr on
Monday, 31 October 2005 at 08:54
Well I will have been here a month tomorrow. I don't have much to write about from this week so I will write a bit about why this is such a great place.
One thing I like is the variety of people I am living with. There are people from all around the world - 30% of Trinity's students are from overseas (a lot from Poland). First there are those whom I see many times a day, who live along my corridor and it's always good to say hello to or have a chat with. A group of us went to see the Wallace and Gromit film last week. Five out of ten are Mathmos and another two Natscis (Natural Science). Then when I go to Hall for a meal, I eat with other people from round the college who are studying lots of different subjects.
It is also a great place to learn. I have written about how useful I find supervisions; and always having another good mathematician to talk to about a problem is helpful. But for me who is interested in everything, there are lots of opportunities to learn about other things as well. For example there are the language courses I am doing, and a good college library. Plus of course you can go to lectures in other subjects - I did Engineering and Politics this week.
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Martin
Tags
cambridge, lectures, supervisions, trinity